[extropy-chat] Futurist priorities was ex-tropical

[Technotranscendence]

On Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:21 PM Rafal Smigrodzki rafal at smigrodzki.org
wrote:
>> Orphan drugs and life-extension drugs are
>> not as popular, and are not as optimized
>> by the market.  The market is a popularity
>> contest where the majority rules.
>
> ### Most definitely not! The market is a
> popularity contest with no single winner,
> where every minority has a chance of a
> win, proportionate to the size of the
> demand they generate.

True, and things can change.  Notably, life extension drugs are widely
available.  There's a big industry for longevity in the US... and it
ranges from people who just buy herbs to those who go to life extension
clinics to get injections and the like.

> Orphan drugs are not supplied as widely as
> wide-market drugs - and of course it should
> be so, since the limited resources of our
> society should not be spread to cover all
> diseases of even the smallest importance,
> which would leave the mega-killers
> inadequately treated.

While it's true that the larger the demand for something, the more
effort will be deployed in its provision on a free market, the current
state of the drug market is distorted by heavy government interventions.
Specifically, in the US, the FDA and drug regulations have driven up the
cost of research and development of drugs and actually forbidden some
forms of marketing as well as kept certain drugs illegal (so called
narcotics).  (On the marketing, you can't always state what a substance
is good for -- only what the FDA has approved of.  The slows down the
spread of information to consumers.)

Regards,

Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html